Deception Point

Chapter 66-68
66

Strong arms lifted her.

Rachel felt the powerful strangers drying her body and wrapping her in blankets. She was being placed on a medical bed of some sort and vigorously massaged on her arms, legs, and feet. Another injection in her arm.

"Adrenaline," someone said.

Rachel felt the drug coursing through her veins like a life force, invigorating her muscles. Although she still felt an icy hollowness tight like a drum in her gut, Rachel sensed the blood slowly returning to her limbs.

Back from the dead.

She tried to focus her vision. Tolland and Corky were lying nearby, shivering in blankets as the men massaged their bodies and gave them injections as well. Rachel had no doubt that this mysterious assemblage of men had just saved their lives. Many of them were soaking wet, apparently having jumped into the showers fully clothed to help. Who they were or how they had gotten to Rachel and the others in time was beyond her. It made no difference at the moment. We're alive.

"Where... are we?" Rachel managed, the simple act of trying to speak bringing on a crashing headache.

The man massaging her replied, "You're on the medical deck of a Los Angeles class-"

"On deck!" someone called out.

Rachel sensed a sudden commotion all around her, and she tried to sit up. One of the men in blue helped, propping her up, and pulling the blankets up around her. Rachel rubbed her eyes and saw someone striding into the room.

The newcomer was a powerful African-American man. Handsome and authoritative. His uniform was khaki. "At ease," he declared, moving toward Rachel, stopping over her and gazing down at her with strong black eyes. "Harold Brown," he said, his voice deep and commanding. "Captain of the U.S.S. Charlotte. And you are?"

U.S.S. Charlotte, Rachel thought. The name seemed vaguely familiar. "Sexton...," she replied. "I'm Rachel Sexton."

The man looked puzzled. He stepped closer, studying her more carefully. "I'll be damned. So you are."

Rachel felt lost. He knows me? Rachel was certain she did not recognize the man, although as her eyes dropped from his face to the patch on his chest, she saw the familiar emblem of an eagle clutching an anchor surrounded by the words U.S. NAVY.

It now registered why she knew the name Charlotte.

"Welcome aboard, Ms. Sexton," the captain said. "You've gisted a number of this ship's recon reports. I know who you are."

"But what are you doing in these waters?" she stammered.

His face hardened somewhat. "Frankly, Ms. Sexton, I was about to ask you the same question."

Tolland sat up slowly now, opening his mouth to speak. Rachel silenced him with a firm shake of her head. Not here. Not now. She had no doubt the first thing Tolland and Corky would want to talk about was the meteorite and the attack, but this was certainly not a topic to discuss in front of a Navy submarine crew. In the world of intelligence, regardless of crisis, CLEARANCE remained king; the meteorite situation remained highly classified.

"I need to speak to NRO director William Pickering," she told the captain. "In private, and immediately."

The captain arched his eyebrows, apparently unaccustomed to taking orders on his own ship.

"I have classified information I need to share."

The captain studied her a long moment. "Let's get your body temperature back, and then I'll put you in contact with the NRO director."

"It's urgent, sir. I-" Rachel stopped short. Her eyes had just seen a clock on the wall over the pharmaceutical closet.
19:51 HOURS.

Rachel blinked, staring. "Is... is that clock right?"

"You're on a navy vessel, ma'am. Our clocks are accurate."

"And is that... Eastern time?"

"7:51 P.M. Eastern Standard. We're out of Norfolk."

My God! she thought, stunned. It's only 7:51 P.M.? Rachel had the impression hours had passed since she passed out. It was not even past eight o'clock? The President has not yet gone public about the meteorite! I still have time to stop him! She immediately slid down off the bed, wrapping the blanket around her. Her legs felt shaky. "I need to speak to the President right away."

The captain looked confused. "The president of what?"

"Of the United States!"

"I thought you wanted William Pickering."

"I don't have time. I need the President."

The captain did not move, his huge frame blocking her way. "My understanding is that the President is about to give a very important live press conference. I doubt he's taking personal phone calls."

Rachel stood as straight as she could on her wobbly legs and fixed her eyes on the captain. "Sir, you do not have the clearance for me to explain the situation, but the President is about to make a terrible mistake. I have information he desperately needs to hear. Now. You need to trust me."

The captain stared at her a long moment. Frowning, he checked the clock again. "Nine minutes? I can't get you a secure connection to the White House in that short a time. All I could offer is a radiophone. Unsecured. And we'd have to go to antenna depth, which will take a few-"

"Do it! Now!"

67

The White House telephone switchboard was located on the lower level of the East Wing. Three switchboard operators were always on duty. At the moment, only two were seated at the controls. The third operator was at a full sprint toward the Briefing Room. In her hand, she carried a cordless phone. She'd tried to patch the call through to the Oval Office, but the President was already en route to the press conference. She'd tried to call his aides on their cellulars, but before televised briefings, all cellular phones in and around the Briefing Room were turned off so as not to interrupt the proceedings.

Running a cordless phone directly to the President at a time like this seemed questionable at best, and yet when the White House's NRO liaison called claiming she had emergency information that the President must get before going live, the operator had little doubt she needed to jump. The question now was whether she would get there in time.

In a small medical office onboard the U.S.S. Charlotte, Rachel Sexton clutched a phone receiver to her ear and waited to talk to the President. Tolland and Corky sat nearby, still looking shaken. Corky had five stitches and a deep bruise on his cheekbone. All three of them had been helped into Thinsulate thermal underwear, heavy navy flight suits, oversized wool socks, and deck boots. With a hot cup of stale coffee in her hand, Rachel was starting to feel almost human again.

"What's the holdup?" Tolland pressed. "It's seven fifty-six!"

Rachel could not imagine. She had successfully reached one of the White House operators, explained who she was and that this was an emergency. The operator seemed sympathetic, had placed Rachel on hold, and was now, supposedly, making it her top priority to patch Rachel through to the President.

Four minutes, Rachel thought. Hurry up!

Closing her eyes, Rachel tried to gather her thoughts. It had been one hell of a day. I'm on a nuclear submarine, she said to herself, knowing she was damned lucky to be anywhere at all. According to the submarine captain, the Charlotte had been on a routine patrol in the Bering Sea two days ago and had picked up anomalous underwater sounds coming from the Milne Ice Shelf-drilling, jet noise, lots of encrypted radio traffic. They had been redirected and told to lie quietly and listen. An hour or so ago, they'd heard an explosion in the ice shelf and moved in to check it out. That was when they heard Rachel's SOS call.

"Three minutes left!" Tolland sounded anxious now as he monitored the clock.

Rachel was definitely getting nervous now. What was taking so long? Why hadn't the President taken her call? If Zach Herney went public with the data as it stood-

Rachel forced the thought from her mind and shook the receiver. Pick up!

As the White House operator dashed toward the stage entrance of the Briefing Room, she was met with a gathering throng of staff members. Everyone here was talking excitedly, making final preparations. She could see the President twenty yards away waiting at the entrance. The makeup people were still primping.

"Coming through!" the operator said, trying to get through the crowd. "Call for the President. Excuse me. Coming through!"

"Live in two minutes!" a media coordinator called out.

Clutching the phone, the operator shoved her way toward the President. "Call for the President!" she panted. "Coming through!"

A towering roadblock stepped into her path. Marjorie Tench. The senior adviser's long face grimaced down in disapproval. "What's going on?"

"I have an emergency!" The operator was breathless. "... phone call for the President."

Tench looked incredulous. "Not now, you don't!"

"It's from Rachel Sexton. She says it's urgent."

The scowl that darkened Tench's face appeared to be more one of puzzlement than anger. Tench eyed the cordless phone. "That's a house line. That's not secure."

"No, ma'am. But the incoming call is open anyway. She's on a radiophone. She needs to speak to the President right away."

"Live in ninety seconds!"

Tench's cold eyes stared, and she held out a spider-like hand. "Give me the phone."

The operator's heart was pounding now. "Ms. Sexton wants to speak to President Herney directly. She told me to postpone the press conference until she'd talked to him. I assured-"

Tench stepped toward the operator now, her voice a seething whisper. "Let me tell you how this works. You do not take orders from the daughter of the President's opponent, you take them from me. I can assure you, this is as close as you are getting to the President until I find out what the hell is going on."

The operator looked toward the President, who was now surrounded by microphone technicians, stylists, and several staff members talking him through final revisions of his speech.

"Sixty seconds!" the television supervisor yelled.

Onboard the Charlotte, Rachel Sexton was pacing wildly in the tight space when she finally heard a click on the telephone line.

A raspy voice came on. "Hello?"

"President Herney?" Rachel blurted.

"Marjorie Tench," the voice corrected. "I am the President's senior adviser. Whoever this is, I must warn you that prank calls against the White House are in violation of-"

For Christ's sake! "This is not a prank! This is Rachel Sexton. I'm your NRO liaison and-"

"I am aware of who Rachel Sexton is, ma'am. And I am doubtful that you are she. You've called the White House on an unsecured line telling me to interrupt a major presidential broadcast. That is hardly proper MO for someone with-"

"Listen," Rachel fumed, "I briefed your whole staff a couple of hours ago on a meteorite. You sat in the front row. You watched my briefing on a television sitting on the President's desk! Any questions?"

Tench fell silent a moment. "Ms. Sexton, what is the meaning of this?"

"The meaning is that you have to stop the President! His meteorite data is all wrong! We've just learned the meteorite was inserted from beneath the ice shelf. I don't know by whom, and I don't know why! But things are not what they seem up here! The President is about to endorse some seriously errant data, and I strongly advise-"

"Wait one goddamned minute!" Tench lowered her voice. "Do you realize what you are saying?"

"Yes! I suspect the NASA administrator has orchestrated some kind of large-scale fraud, and President Herney is about to get caught in the middle. You've at least got to postpone ten minutes so I can explain to him what's been going on up here. Someone tried to kill me, for God's sake!"

Tench's voice turned to ice. "Ms. Sexton, let me give you a word of warning. If you are having second thoughts about your role in helping the White House in this campaign, you should have thought of that long before you personally endorsed that meteorite data for the President."

"What!" Is she even listening?

"I'm revolted by your display. Using an unsecured line is a cheap stunt. Implying the meteorite data has been faked? What kind of intelligence official uses a radiophone to call the White House and talk about classified information? Obviously you are hoping someone intercepts this message."

"Norah Mangor was killed over this! Dr. Ming is also dead. You've got to warn-"

"Stop right there! I don't know what you're playing at, but I will remind you-and anyone else who happens to be intercepting this phone call-that the White House possesses videotaped depositions from NASA's top scientists, several renowned civilian scientists, and yourself, Ms. Sexton, all endorsing the meteorite data as accurate. Why you are suddenly changing your story, I can only imagine. Whatever the reason, consider yourself relieved of your White House post as of this instant, and if you try to taint this discovery with any more absurd allegations of foul play, I assure you the White House and NASA will sue you for defamation so fast you won't have a chance to pack a suitcase before you go to jail."

Rachel opened her mouth to speak, but no words came.

"Zach Herney has been generous to you," Tench snapped, "and frankly this smacks of a cheap Sexton publicity stunt. Drop it right now, or we'll press charges. I swear it."

The line went dead.

Rachel's mouth was still hanging open when the captain knocked on the door.

"Ms. Sexton?" the captain said, peering in. "We're picking up a faint signal from Canadian National Radio. President Zach Herney has just begun his press conference."

68

Standing at the podium in the White House Briefing Room, Zach Herney felt the heat of the media lights and knew the world was watching. The targeted blitz performed by the White House Press Office had created a contagion of media buzz. Those who did not hear about the address via television, radio, or on-line news invariably heard about it from neighbors, coworkers, and family. By 8:00 P.M., anyone not living in a cave was speculating about the topic of the President's address. In bars and living rooms over the globe, millions leaned toward their televisions in apprehensive wonder.

It was during moments like these-facing the world-that Zach Herney truly felt the weight of his office. Anyone who said power was not addictive had never really experienced it. As he began his address, however, Herney sensed something was amiss. He was not a man prone to stage fright, and so the tingle of apprehension now tightening in his core startled him.

It's the magnitude of the audience, he told himself. And yet he knew something else. Instinct. Something he had seen.

It had been such a little thing, and yet...

He told himself to forget it. It was nothing. And yet it stuck.

Tench.

Moments ago, as Herney was preparing to take the stage, he had seen Marjorie Tench in the yellow hallway, talking on a cordless phone. This was strange in itself, but it was made more so by the White House operator standing beside her, her face white with apprehension. Herney could not hear Tench's phone conversation, but he could see it was contentious. Tench was arguing with a vehemence and anger the President had seldom seen-even from Tench. He paused a moment and caught her eye, inquisitive.

Tench gave him the thumbs-up. Herney had never seen Tench give anyone the thumbs-up. It was the last image in Herney's mind as he was cued onto the stage.

On the blue rug in the press area inside the NASA habisphere on Ellesmere Island, Administrator Lawrence Ekstrom was seated at the center of the long symposium table, flanked by top NASA officials and scientists. On a large monitor facing them the President's opening statement was being piped in live. The remainder of the NASA crew was huddled around other monitors, teeming with excitement as their commander-in-chief launched into his press conference.

"Good evening," Herney was saying, sounding uncharacteristically stiff. "To my fellow countrymen, and to our friends around the world... "

Ekstrom gazed at the huge charred mass of rock displayed prominently in front of him. His eyes moved to a standby monitor, where he watched himself, flanked by his most austere personnel, against a backdrop of a huge American flag and NASA logo. The dramatic lighting made the setting look like some kind of neomodern painting-the twelve apostles at the last supper. Zach Herney had turned this whole thing into a political sideshow. Herney had no choice. Ekstrom still felt like a televangelist, packaging God for the masses.

In about five minutes the President would introduce Ekstrom and his NASA staff. Then, in a dramatic satellite linkup from the top of the world, NASA would join the President in sharing this news with the world. After a brief account of how the discovery was made, what it meant for space science, and some mutual backpatting, NASA and the President would hand duty off to celebrity scientist Michael Tolland, whose documentary would roll for just under fifteen minutes. Afterward, with credibility and enthusiasm at its peak, Ekstrom and the President would say their good-nights, promising more information to come in the days ahead via endless NASA press conferences.

As Ekstrom sat and waited for his cue, he felt a cavernous shame settling inside him. He'd known he would feel it. He'd been expecting it.

He'd told lies... endorsed untruths.

Somehow, though, the lies seemed inconsequential now. Ekstrom had a bigger weight on his mind.

In the chaos of the ABC production room, Gabrielle Ashe stood shoulder to shoulder with dozens of strangers, all necks craned toward the bank of television monitors suspended from the ceiling. A hush fell as the moment arrived. Gabrielle closed her eyes, praying that when she opened them she would not be looking at images of her own naked body.

The air inside Senator Sexton's den was alive with excitement. All of his visitors were standing now, their eyes glued to the large-screen television.

Zach Herney stood before the world, and incredibly, his greeting had been awkward. He seemed momentarily uncertain.

He looks shaky, Sexton thought. He never looks shaky.

"Look at him," somebody whispered. "It has to be bad news."

The space station? Sexton wondered.

Herney looked directly into the camera and took a deep breath. "My friends, I have puzzled for many days now over how best to make this announcement... "

Three easy words, Senator Sexton willed him. We blew it.

Herney spoke for a moment about how unfortunate it was that NASA had become such an issue in this election and how, that being the case, he felt he needed to preface the timing of his impending statement with an apology.

"I would have preferred any other moment in history to make this announcement," he said. "The political charge in the air tends to make doubters out of dreamers, and yet as your President, I have no choice but to share with you what I have recently learned." He smiled. "It seems the magic of the cosmos is something which does not work on any human schedule... not even that of a president."

Everyone in Sexton's den seemed to recoil in unison. What?

"Two weeks ago," Herney said, "NASA's new Polar Orbiting Density Scanner passed over the Milne Ice Shelf on Ellesmere Island, a remote landmass located above the Eightieth Parallel in the high Arctic Ocean."

Sexton and the others exchanged confused looks.

"This NASA satellite," Herney continued, "detected a large, high-density rock buried two hundred feet under the ice." Herney smiled now for the first time, finding his stride. "On receiving the data, NASA immediately suspected PODS had found a meteorite."

"A meteorite?" Sexton sputtered, standing. "This is news?"

"NASA sent a team up to the ice shelf to take core samples. It was then that NASA made... " He paused.

"Frankly, they made the scientific discovery of the century."

Sexton took an incredulous step toward the television. No.... His guests shifted uneasily.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Herney announced, "several hours ago, NASA pulled from the Arctic ice an eight-ton meteorite, which contains... " The President paused again, giving the whole world time to lean forward. "A meteorite which contains fossils of a life-form. Dozens of them. Unequivocal proof of extraterrestrial life."

On cue, a brilliant image illuminated on the screen behind the President-a perfectly delineated fossil of an enormous buglike creature embedded in a charred rock.

In Sexton's den, six entrepreneurs jumped up in wide-eyed horror. Sexton stood frozen in place.

"My friends," the President said, "the fossil behind me is 190 million years old. It was discovered in a fragment of a meteorite called the Jungersol Fall which hit the Arctic Ocean almost three centuries ago. NASA's exciting new PODS satellite discovered this meteorite fragment buried in an ice shelf. NASA and this administration have taken enormous care over the past two weeks to confirm every aspect of this momentous discovery before making it public. In the next half hour you will be hearing from numerous NASA and civilian scientists, as well as viewing a short documentary prepared by a familiar face whom I'm sure you all will recognize. Before I go any further, though, I absolutely must welcome, live via satellite from above the Arctic Circle, the man whose leadership, vision, and hard work is solely responsible for this historic moment. It is with great honor that I present NASA administrator Lawrence Ekstrom."

Herney turned to the screen on perfect cue.

The image of the meteorite dramatically dissolved into a regal-looking panel of NASA scientists seated at a long table, flanked by the dominant frame of Lawrence Ekstrom.

"Thank you, Mr. President." Ekstrom's air was stern and proud as he stood up and looked directly into the camera. "It gives me great pride to share with all of you, this-NASA's finest hour."

Ekstrom spoke passionately about NASA and the discovery. With a fanfare of patriotism and triumph, he segued flawlessly to a documentary hosted by civilian science-celebrity Michael Tolland.

As he watched, Senator Sexton fell to his knees in front of the television, his fingers clutching at his silver mane. No! God, no!